Chapter Twenty - Lucifer #2
I laid my palms flat on the map to keep it from curling up at the edges. Vespera and I had spent hours on the rooftop terrace drawing it. She’d pointed, and I’d marked. She’d corrected, and I’d redrawn. When I’d asked how she knew, she’d only smiled and said, “Because I had to.”
Now the map sat under Reliquary lights like a diagram of places that wanted to kill us.
“All right,” I said, voice low. “Start from the beginning. Pretend we’re idiots.”
Vespera’s mouth curved. “That won’t be difficult.”
Topher’s head snapped up. Destiny let out a small laugh. Liora’s lips twitched like she was trying not to.
I ignored all of it. “Where is it?”
Vespera leaned forward, nails tapping the paper with deliberate confidence.
“The Beloved aren’t kept in the neighborhood clouds,” she said, tracing the small cluster of neat little shapes we’d sketched, the ones that looked like houses arranged too perfectly.
“They aren’t kept in the garden district either, not anymore.
Those places are for appearances. For visitors. For the illusion that Heaven is soft.”
Her finger drifted toward the far edge of the map, where the largest formation sat apart from everything else.
“The Throne of Dawn.”
The grandest of the palaces. Golden, immaculate, glinting in a light that didn’t come from any sun.
“And they aren’t kept in the palace proper,” she continued, eyes shining as if she was pleased with her own knowledge. “Not in the halls where He walks, not where He hosts, not where He wants to be seen.”
Had people been kept under my feet when I’d been there?
I felt my jaw tighten. “Then where?”
Vespera smiled like she’d been waiting for the question her whole life.
“Unless He’s moved it again, it’s beneath the palace gardens,” she said, tapping a small mark I’d drawn near the base of the gilded sprawl.
“It’s not underground, exactly. The clouds there are layered, thickened into shapes that hold.
Inside the layers, there’s a hollowed space, a hidden annex that doesn’t show from the outside.
The entrance is disguised as part of the hedgework, a gate that looks decorative until you know the pattern of the leaves. ”
Morathis’s gaze flicked to Thyronis like she wanted to say, Hear that, Gatekeeper, there’s a pattern, but she held her tongue.
Vespera kept going, enjoying herself now. “It’s not a prison in the way you’re imagining. It’s curated. Designed. Rooms like little stages, pretty furniture, soft lighting, everything arranged as if the Beloved were meant to be special. Admired.”
Destiny swallowed hard. Her hand found the edge of the table, then let go like she’d touched something hot.
Topher’s voice came rough. “And the stasis.”
Vespera’s smile faded a fraction. “Yes,” she said. “That, too. But it won’t affect us. It’s more like a ward He puts on them when they enter.”
The word stasis hit my chest like a fist. I saw Evie for a heartbeat, the way my mind liked to torture me, still and unreachable, preserved like an ornament. I forced myself to breathe through it, steady, controlled, because if I cracked here I’d crack everywhere.
Liora finally spoke. “Okay, I’m sorry,” she said, pointing between Thyronis and Morathis without looking away from them. “What are they?”
Morathis turned her head slowly and regarded Liora with polite interest, like she’d found a new reflection to study.
Thyronis’s ears flicked, annoyed.
“Arcana,” I said, as if that explained anything.
Liora’s eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t explain anything.”
“It’s not supposed to,” Destiny muttered.
Topher made a soft sound that might’ve been a laugh if he’d had any joy left in him. He refocused on the map, fingers moving along the routes we’d drawn from the seam to the palace.
“The approach,” he said, more to himself than anyone. “We enter at the seam, and we fly to the first tower, then cut across to the palace formation.”
Vespera made a soft sound in her throat. “If the Lattice lets you,” she said.
Topher looked up. “The what?”
Her smile sharpened.
“The Lattice,” she repeated, leaning forward and tapping one dark nail against the seam point we’d marked at Groom Lake.
“That’s what Heaven’s gate is now. But it’s not a gate, really.
It’s more a structure. Threads stretched tight across the opening like a harp.
” Her eyes flicked to mine, then back to the map. “It doesn’t attack first. It tests.”
No one said anything for a second.
Then Destiny frowned. “Tests how?”
Vespera’s expression turned almost pleased, like she’d been waiting for someone to ask.
“It throws your own thoughts back at you in His voice,” she said. “Whatever you most fear hearing, whatever doubt lives closest to the bone, it uses that. If you hesitate, even for a second, it decides you’ve failed.”
Liora’s mouth flattened. “That’s terrifying.”
“Yes,” Vespera said lightly. “That’s rather the point.”
Topher looked down at the map again. “And if it decides you’ve failed?”
Vespera’s smile thinned. “Then it sends the Riftspinners,” she said. “That’s one of Heaven’s dirty little secrets.”
“The what spinners?” Liora asked.
“Riftspinners,” Vespera repeated. “Thin little winged things that cling to the edge of the tear like stitches. They don’t scream. They make an awful clicking noise. Their entire purpose is to sew any breach shut the moment it forms.”
Destiny made a face. “I hate this already.”
“You’ll hate this part more,” Vespera said. “If you kill one, it splits into two smaller ones. More frantic. More hungry.”
A coil of dread tightened in my belly. Last night’s dream came back to me all at once, everything Vespera just described, it was all there. And what happened to Topher… was it a prophecy? Or just a bad dream?
“That is deeply unsettling,” Destiny muttered.
Morathis lifted one elegant hand, fingers flexing as if She could already feel the shape of it in the air. “Which is why you do not kill them,” She said smoothly. “You keep them off the seam physically. I reflect the Lattice back on itself. If the threads see their own lie, they will slacken.”
Thyronis stepped closer to the table, His shadow swallowing part of the map. “And I hold the seam open.”
Azazael folded his arms. “And the rest of us?”
I looked at him. “Keep moving. Don’t hesitate. Don’t stop.”
Vespera tapped the map once more.
“The gate doesn’t care whether you’re brave,” she said. “It cares whether you falter. So when you go through, don’t think. Don’t second-guess. And whatever His voice says in your head, ignore it.”
Topher exhaled once through his nose, then dragged his finger back along the route lines on the map.
“Okay,” he said. “Then the approach stays the same, just uglier. We come through the Lattice. Then, first tower, then cut across to the palace formation.”
“He renovates often, but that Rapunzel tower was a checkpoint,” Vespera said, preening again now that she’d regained momentum.
“Not heavily guarded, but watched. It’s where they notice movement between formations.
If you fly in a tight group like you’re trying to hide, you look guilty.
If you fly open like you belong, you look… expected.”
“And if it goes sideways,” Topher added, tapping two lines he’d drawn in a darker ink, “I can bend paths. Not on the way, but enough to shorten the return. Enough to get us back to the seam faster.”
Vespera’s eyes glittered. “If it goes sideways, it’ll be because someone hesitates.”
I turned my head slowly toward her.
She lifted her chin, unbothered. “You asked for brass tacks,” she said. “Those are the them.”
The room went quiet for a beat, not because anyone disagreed, but because she was right in the worst way.
I dragged my gaze back to the map. To the mark beneath the palace gardens. To the thin route lines. To the seam point we’d labeled in the margin, GROOM LAKE, like writing it down made it less insane. This whole plan was insane, but we were doing it.
“We go in,” I said, voice flat and controlled. “We get Evie. And we get out. Fast as we can. Preferably without His detection.”
Destiny’s eyes lifted to mine. “We’re really doing this,” she said softly. Not a question. A plea and a promise tangled together.
“We are doing this,” I confirmed. And in my head, there was only one thing that mattered—getting her back today.
Thyronis’s ears angled forward. “I will hold the seam,” He said. “As long as it allows me.”
Morathis’s gaze sharpened. “And I will keep you hidden until the moment you cannot be.”
My eyes stayed on the mark, on the place beneath the palace gardens where the Beloved were kept. Hope and fear braided tighter in my chest until they felt like the same thing.
“I need her back,” I said, and the words came out rougher than I intended. “In my arms, breathing, alive, and even furious. I don’t care, I’ll take furious.”
No one interrupted. Even Vespera’s smugness softened, just a fraction. I lifted my gaze, letting it rake over them, over this strange assembly of loyalty and power and stubbornness.
“We move at first light,” I said. “Tonight, we memorize this map, we run drills on the order through the seam, we plan for the return to be ugly, because it probably will.”
Then I looked down again, at the gold palace sketched in ink. “And we don’t stop,” I added quietly, “until she’s safe again.”
Even if Heaven didn’t survive the attempt.